What should happen if an unpopular politician is voted out in an election? You’d have thought that the answer is "they lose power" and – thankfully – in many countries around the world, that’s what happens.

But the UK is rather different. It has a special little retirement scheme. Got booted out of office? Don’t worry, just hang round for a while and you’ll be given a place for life in Parliament, complete with voting rights, without any risk of ever losing an election again.

I am talking, of course, about the House of Lords. What more eloquent example do we need of the willingness of some in our political establishment to freeze out the public that even now, well into the twenty-first century, we have our laws voted on week after week (when Parliament sits!) by people beyond the reach of democracy?

And I most assuredly include Labour in this establishment – for after eleven and more years in power, there is no excuse for still having failed to introduce democracy to our upper chamber. Saying now they might eventually get round to doing something after the next general election is no real sign of action – it is the classic punting of the issue into the long grass.

So when I hear government ministers talk about the need to engage the public more in our political system – as Hazel Blears did last week in her speech to the Hansard Society – excuse me if I approach it with a fair degree of cynicism.

Both in its symbolism and in its practical impact, introducing democracy into that half of our Parliament would do far more for engaging people with our political systems than a decade of speeches from the rest of us over the other side in the Commons.

But my concerns with the Blears’ approach to democracy run deeper than just my belief that Parliament should be – well – democratic. Buried in between her swipes at bloggers and commentators were these words:

"Commentary has taken over from investigation or news reporting, to the point where commentators are viewed by some as every bit as important as elected politicians, with views as valid as Cabinet Ministers."

"As valid" hey? Certainly the view from outside the ministerial bunker is often very different from that from inside, but just because you are commentating on something rather than being a Cabinet Minister doesn’t suddenly make your views less "valid".

Indeed, many commentators on many topics have far more expertise than Cabinet Ministers who have been through the shuffle-round-the-departments merry-go-round on their ascent to the Cabinet, leaving them with little real in depth expertise in any area.

Add in to this Blears’ view that, "If you can wield influence and even power, without ever standing for office or being held to account by an electorate, it further undermines our democracy" and I get a worrying picture of someone with – despite the surface rhetoric about devolution – actually a very centralising, all power to the ministerial apparatus outlook.

Because real devolution of power and engagement with the public means dispersing power and influence all through society – not just democratising the House of Lords which – irony alert! – in its present state actually pretty much meets Hazel’s description of the very thing she says undermines democracy.

No devolution means spreading influence to all sorts of groups. School governing bodies, residents’ associations, trade bodies, transport users’ groups and more – all should of which should even have a touch of power.

Democracy and democratic institutions need to be central to this web of wider power and influence, but power and influence should be about so much more than just casting a vote for your choice of politicians every now and again.

So – yes, I agree with Hazel Blears when it comes to saying we need to improve our politics and engage more with people. But – I fear that in reality far from being part of the solution, she is part of the problem.

This article first appeared on the New Statesman website, where you can also read Hazel Blears’ response and comments from the public.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

A story with a happy ending – shock horror! Without being overly twee – and not necessarily being always on the side of conservation per se (as to me it kind of depends what you are conserving) – I do believe that the appearances of Crouch End Broadway is definitely worth preserving and conserving – which means sometimes taking up the cudgels in its defence!

Let me explain. Crouch End Broadway is in a conservation area. But Haringey Council has introduced contracts to display adverts on banners hanging from our lampposts as well as a plethora of self-promotional council propaganda on same.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) availed themselves of this advertising opportunity and took out a contract with Haringey Council to display their banners in Crouch End. But they were – let us say – ugly, noticeable and then some. Basically they stuck out like a sore thumb – and so Councillor Dave Winskill (Liberal Democrat, Crouch End ward) and I launched a two-pronged attack on the garish KFC banners.

I’ve nothing against Kentucky Fried Chicken – other than its calorie count! – but the banners streaming (or should I say screaming) loudly in the middle of a conservation area were out of place in Crouch End.

First shot at Haringey Council brought complete intransigence from Labour over their removal. Pleas to Haringey to remove the banners fell on deaf ears with officials citing binding contracts as the reason they couldn’t be removed.

So I wrote to KFC’s UK Managing Director to request that they take action to ensure the withdrawal of the ad campaign.

As the ante was upped with questions asked at council meetings, Haringey Council finally took its fingers out of its ears and took action to end the contract and the banners were removed. That’s when politics works!

Now we need Haringey Council to make sure that future contracts only allow appropriate advertising sensitive to any local area they are placed in. – and that means in some areas, no advertising at all on lamp posts. As ever, one of the keys to sensible policy making is making sure policies aren’t just splattered across the whole borough ("Adverts? Put them everywhere!") but that local circumstances are taken into account. But for the moment – success!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

I shall go to the ball! I have been invited (along with hundreds of others) to the American Embassy for Presidential election night. Obama versus McCain – what a roller-coaster ride and political battle of the first order that has been – and maybe still is as McCain marginally closes the gap opened up by Obama in the last couple of weeks.

To be frank – I was a Hillary supporter – and I have my doubts about some of the policies Obama has pushed, such as the possibility of unilateral US military intervention in Pakistan. But compared with McCain – Obama is vastly preferable.

What has really surprised me though is the relative poor quality of the Presidential debates. I’ve watched them and been disappointed each time as both Obama and McCain failed to really deliver. I can’t say that they particularly articulated a vision which appealed to me – but then I am not an American.

I understand the desire for change Obama in particular is trying to tap in to – anyone must be better than George W Bush! Deep in my waters I fear an appeal based too heavily on being new and young – maybe to do with sub-conscious memories of T Blair. But more optimistically – maybe he really is the business. I just hope he wins!

Much of the coverage has been about the sites of both campaigns – and Obama’s in particular – putting together huge networks of supporters for their campaigns. Of course – with a population six times ours, the numbers are bound to be huge by our standards!

I think there is also a very big question mark about whether the ranks of small donors is really the good thing it is normally painted as. Certainly – lots of small donors is better than a few big donors, but the US has for decades had pretty tight limits on the maximum size of donations. And as for the small donors – my reading of events is that in the US people tend to give money rather than time to campaigns, whilst in the UK it is more a matter of giving time than money.

Reading accounts of people helping with door knocking and leaflet drops in the US, I think many UK political activists can only look on with envy at the relatively short lists of doors and short delivery runs compared with what is usual over here.

And given the choice – I’d rather have a political system that makes use of people’s time than money, as that makes for a healthier democracy. Of course you need both – but we shouldn’t be blind to the drawbacks of a system that is so heavily based on building up lists of donors – and then spending the money on advertising – rather than time on the streets communicating with the public. This isn’t just a theoretical issue – because going through Parliament is another round of proposed changes to how politics and political finance is regulated.

The first steps of the debate in Parliament has spun around and around as the Tories slag off the union’s financial support for Labour and Labour slag off the Michael Ashcroft money that is buying Tories marginal seats.

No wonder the British people have such a poor view of us politicians – as our spokesperson, David Howarth said eloquently to both Labour and Tory benches: stop such narrow, internal navel gazing and petty point-scoring for a moment’s media coverage as either the unions or Ashcroft is reviled. Just think what this looks like to the people out there. It is everything they think and hate about us – carrying on the narrow political battle when the crisis of confidence in democracy is raging to the point where people have no faith in politicians or even democracy any longer.

We Liberal Democrats voted against the Bill at second reading because it doesn’t deal with the cancer that eats away at the body politic. There are bits of the Bill that are OK – that improve little bits of the funding process – but it is just tinkering. If we want the people to once more have confidence in politics, politicians and democracy – then Labour have missed this enormous opportunity to restore public confidence in democracy.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

Hey diddle, diddle – are we the mugs who got diddled? As one financial institution after another crashes into trouble, will it be just Northern Rock the taxpayer has to bail out, or will be end up picking up the pieces for even more blunders?

Between them HSBC, RBS, Barclays and HBOS (as was) have written off $52.9 billion – without any individuals being held responsible. Imagine the outrage there would be if the government had lost even a fraction of that amount of money.

At least we’re not US taxpayers – who are going to have to foot the bill for bailing out a huge chunk of their financial system. The “masters of the universe” turned out to be rather puny – not nearly as smart as they thought but – just to add a grating edge, leading their firms into disaster hasn’t stopped them walking away with huge pay packets and pension pots, either in the US or in the UK.

When it comes to bombs or banks – governments always find the money to send in the troops or to bail out the banks. That’s certainly not the story when it comes to public services like health, education or the police – or post offices for that matter!

The ability of a bank to come crashing down with wider consequences does make them a sort-of special case, but this knowledge that the taxpayer may have to bail them out should come with consequences: not just effective regulation, but also personal responsibility. If you make cause a firm to crash, why on earth should you still be picking up bonuses for your performance? That is an obscenity.

And lo and behold – Gordon was in full agreement with me about this last Sunday in his television interview with Andrew Marr – but outside of trying to gain brownie points for being against obscene bonuses – had no methodology to deal with them. Also – ‘scuse me – but wasn’t he Chancellor for the last 10 years when he did absolutely nothing to stop the orgy of irresponsible borrowing, lending, cheap credit and obscene bonuses?

Much of the crisis management we’ve seen in the last few months has been about merging firms. Understandable in the circumstances – but is a financial system of fewer, bigger firms really going to be more resilient in the long-run – and that’s leaving aside the worry that fewer firms will means less competition will means even more banking rip-offs for you and I.

I fear that driven by the desperate need to keep things going now, we are going to end up with a financial system that can very easily fail again because with a smaller number of larger firms, the fallout from one going wrong in the future will be much, more worse.

Strength in the financial system should come from diversity – a large number of firms so that one mistake doesn’t infect the whole system (and also so that most are small enough that those running them can’t simply assume that if they get it wrong someone will bail them out). It’s not just nostalgia to think back warmly to the days of local banks and building societies – there is real merit in promoting diversity too.

But we should also turn our eyes to the auditing profession. Where have the auditors been? We now know just how risky the financial plans were of many firms – but where were the warnings from the auditors about the assumptions that the businesses were staking their futures on? There is a question about the relative roles of auditors and non-executive directors in supervising and highlighting risks – but between them they failed. Just as we are seeing major restructuring amongst firms, we should also see a major rethink amongst auditors. If they fail to warn properly about the sort of financial risks we have seen come home to roost, are they really doing all that we should want auditors to do?

So all in all – it’s us who are being diddled. At every turn our financial well-being has been last on anyone’s list!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

I developed an aversion to lobbyists when I was a candidate for election to Parliament. Given it is the job of lobbyists to seduce actual and would-be MPs, so that they will regard their cause or client favourably, you might think something had gone wrong. It had!

And it’s a shame – because so many of the organisations and causes that lobbied me had views that should have found me a willing audience.

What went wrong? Generally lobbyists didn’t understand how and when to present their case. As it’s simplest – candidates in elections are at their very busiest in the immediate run-up to an election. So is that the best time to approach? No! Yet many organisations stay quiet for four years and then suddenly think the four weeks of a general election are the best time to make contact. There are good and bad times all through the Parliamentary cycle – and you’ve got to know them.

And the amount of money organisations pour into the glossy brochures and lobby companies needs to be well spent. From what I could see – it was more about the lobbyists ticking boxes and telling their clients that they had contacts x-thousand of candidates and had x responses.

No – my advice to those who seek my support is to think about me. Think about my time commitment. Think what will really benefit the cause – and what you really want me to do, and how to break it down into simple, easy to get started requests. Then you will build up a dialogue and in time a long-term relationship.

My life is over-flowing with information. You may want me to take onboard your information, but what’s the reason why I should? No matter how worthy your cause or how persuasive your case – there is not enough time in the day for me to take on board every worthwhile or relevant scrap of information. So how do you make your own cause really stand out?

You have to know me, and think of me as a person – not as one of a group of MPs or candidates. It’s not all touchy feely by any means. Top statistics to support a cause are the absolute bees knees for me personally. The lobbyists who provide local statistics, local activities, local information etc – they are the ones who really get through.

Tick box campaigning begets tick box support. Make it real. Make it worthwhile. Make it genuine. I am nobody’s fodder!

Written forInsight Public Affairs’s 2008/09 guide to good and bad lobbying.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

Labour has poured huge sums of money into the youth justice system since they came to power in 1997 – but failed to make an impact on youth offending. Labour has used the justice system as the main focus for the provision of the social support that at risk children need through Youth Offending Teams and spent more than 10 times as much money on youth courts and custody than on preventative measures. This has led to more children entering the youth justice system than ever before without altering the level of criminality. This approach is based on an assessment of the symptoms rather than the causes of youth crime and a presumption that removing a few bad apples will save the barrel – but it will not work if the barrel has dry-rot.

There needs to be a shift in emphasis; criminalising children should be a last resort, not the first option.It is essential that young people are given the support and guidance they need to grow into responsible adults. A key factor in this is involvement in adult-supported activities. Whether this is the Cadets or a local drama group, it is through constructive activities that young people learn how to behave.Children from wealthier backgrounds tend to be involved in more adult-supported activities than those in poverty- and it is here that social exclusion enters the debate.

As with education, deprivation is a significant factor in determining outcomes. This is partly because wealth allows us to buy dance classes and drama lessons for our little cherubs, but also because people living in wealthier areas tend to be more willing to set up Scout Troupes or drama groups- they tend to have greater community spirit.This is where I believe good government can make a difference- by enabling community activities and releasing the latent good will that there is in our communities we can begin to build the community capital.

The fact is that stronger communities lower crime – the more people you know within a fifteen minute walk of your home, the lower the crime rate will be. Stronger communities mean more likelihood of intervention when people misbehave. The question must therefore be: how do we strengthen communities to prevent youth crime?

Central to this is giving back to communities a genuine role in the justice system – restorative justice, where victims confront a criminal with the consequences of their crime give both victims and perpetrators a better understanding of the motivation and impact of crimes; Community Justice Panels, where representatives of the local communities agree a course of reparation with the offender allow the community to feel that justice has been done; and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) which agree levels of acceptable behaviour with an offender can all contribute to a genuinely community-led justice system.

There needs to be an understanding of the context that allows young people to become criminals and a focus on creating the communities and activities that will divert children away from crime.Changing the system to include the community can help with this but it is also essential that adult-led activities – such as drama and drill- allow young people to learn how to behave and to develop aspirations. By simply fast-tracking children to custody, all Labour has done is spent an enormous amount of money and increased the public fear of crime – not a good result!

This was written for the Liberal Democrat Education Association’s booklet, Liberal Democrats in Education: what we are thinking and doing.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008